Racks for displaying and dispensing articles such as toothbrushes and lipsticks are well known and come in a large variety of shapes and constructions. Advantageously the articles are stacked vertically or on a slope, with the article to be dispensed at a frontmost or bottom position, hereinafter referred to as the dispensing position, at which it may be removed from the rack. When the article to be dispensed is intrinsically heavy, such as a can of soda, the articles can be stacked up and the frontmost article urged by its own weight and the weight of the articles above it towards the dispensing position. When the article is lightweight, however, it may be necessary to add some means for urging or pushing the articles towards the dispensing position. This pusher means must supply sufficient force to ensure that the articles are pushed to the front of the dispenser while allowing the articles to be loaded into the dispenser in front of the pusher means. Thus, when a weight is placed behind the articles for this purpose, it must be heavy enough to push the articles effectively while being light enough to be displaced backwards to allow loading.
A third and highly significant consideration is that the pusher means continue to exert the forward force along the entire extent of the rack. If this ceases to happen, the pusher will fail to exert any force on the remaining articles, which may therefore not be moved to the dispensing position. For example, if the pusher means is designed to move along a track, it very important to prevent it from jamming or cocking by sideways turning along the track.
Furthermore, when articles are stacked vertically or along a descending slope, it is important to ensure that neither the articles nor any portion of the rack itself become free to fall, for example during a loading operation to insert articles into the rack.